Million Lights
by TheHummingbirdMoth
Summary: AU. Sif and the Warriors Three are an up-and-coming rock band. Loki is their manager. Thor and the Avengers are a rival band. And Hogun hates Budapest. Hogun/Sif/Volstagg/Fandral, Loki/Balder.
1. start the revolution

Title belongs to Tree63 and the one song they have ever sung that I actually liked.

Warning: BANDFIC, may I be forgiven. Crossover with the Avengers, but not so much that it's important. Asgardians-as-human crack.

**Million Lights**

_Chapter 1: Start the revolution_

Everything about Fandral was a joke- his sissy beard, his fancy moustache, his overly florid speech patterns, his deliberately excessive cordiality, his clothes, his hobbies (FENCING, for god's sake) - every single damn thing about Fandral was a joke right up until the part where he started to perform.

Then even Hogun had keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself, because Fandral was the best performer he had ever seen.

Not the best musician he'd ever seen, certainly not the best musician in the band- that dubious honour fell to Volstagg, their bass guitarist- but the best performer by a thousand miles. Sif didn't engage with the audience at all, too intensely focussed on her song, staring off into some distant point above their heads with this fixed expression that looked great on album covers but scared the hell out of Hogun whenever he happened to see it. And Hogun, he barely ever looked up from his drums. Hated the audience, hated their faces, their noise. Once, a pair of candy-pink underpants that had once landed on his symbols, and he had dispatched them back into the roaring crowd with a flick of his drum stick and without missing a beat.

But Fandral… he walked on stage, glanced up, bit his lip like a schoolboy with his eyes shining so you could tell he was about to enjoy the hell out of this, and they were all in love with him already. Ran his hand through his hair, struck a chord. In ten seconds, half the panties in the room were soaked.

In that indie rag that had given them the rave review three months back, they'd been listed by popularity. Fandral had headed the polls, bolstered by the teenage girl demographic, and the teenage boy demographic, and, once Hogun stopped sulking long enough to admit it, probably also by any demographic with warm blood flowing through its veins. People liked Fandral, liked watching him perform, give interviews, anything. Five seconds in his presence and you could tell you were in good company.

Hogun had been at the bottom of the list. The magazine had attributed it to his bad posture.

Centre stage, Sif gave an imperceptible nod. Time to get going.

He raised his sticks. He dropped his sticks. The lights came on, Sif opened her mouth and the next few hours passed in blur, until…

"...You've been a great audience, and we just want to say…!"

"...Four! Three! Two...!"

"...HAPPY NEW YEAR...!"

It was three minutes after midnight and two minutes after Hogun was privileged to watch their bass guitarist catch someone's lacy brassiere in his teeth when Fandral yanked him aside and asked if he wanted to become blood brothers. Hogun shrugged, and said, honestly enough, he couldn't think of any reason why not.

Dawn broke to find Sif draped over a table, snoring loudly, Volstagg in a puddle on the floor, clutching the stuffed pig that had featured on the front of their two albums (he'd said it was their mascot; their manager, surprisingly, had approved, saying it would be good for the merch), and Fandral with twelve stitches in his arm. The floor was coated in congealed Hungarian beer, and the melted remains of Fandral's attempt to construct an ice sculpture on the bar.

Hogun decided that he hated Budapest. And Hungary. All Hungary. All Hungarian people.

He had nine stiches on his arm.

"Where the fuck are my drumsticks?" he growled.

He found them in a plate of leftover döner kebab.

0

Sif (born Susan, Swedish mother, American father) was a pagan, a real one, and she took all of this stuff very, very seriously. She had wanted them to use authentic Norse names from the Eddas, and had been put out when they'd refused.

"The names you picked all have funny spelling," Fandral had protested. "If people can't pronounce our names properly, it's going to make interviews really awkward, Sue… Sif."

They'd made their names up instead.

There was them, and then there was their manager.

Who arrived to drag them home from the bar just after the sun rose, tsking as they groaned and stumbled along behind him.

Their manager dressed like someone who collected expensive abstract sculptures as a hobby, and then fixed tiny microphones to them and positioned them strategically in government buildings. Hogun did not think he had ever once seen their manager entirely sober. He kept a small silver flask on his person at all times, and took sips from it roughly every five minutes. You wouldn't have thought it to look at him, with his smooth face and combed hair. He never even slurred. The only way you could really tell when he'd been putting it away was in a tendency to lapse into run-on sentences with slightly less than perfect grammar.

His real name was Liobhan, so Fandral had insisted they dub him Loki, 'if the rest of us have to have silly fake names.' It hadn't bothered Liobhan, to whom fake names stuck surprisingly well, so now they had a manager whose name was Loki. They'd picked him up early- he'd been this weird, slightly off guy they all knew from one place or another (Sif knew him from university, Fandral knew him from a bar, Volstagg knew him from the stables where he'd worked part time before becoming a full-time guitar-player; where, apparently, their manager had kept a fine mare. Hogun knew him because they had a drug dealer in common, and one time he'd gotten their particular requests mixed up and they'd met to do the exchange. Awkward to meet the guy a few months later, watching them rehearse. Telling them that they were good, and then offering to manage their band for them.)

Hogun's relationship with Loki was a little strained, because Loki's mind worked the same way his did.

But he could forgive any and all of that, because Loki had one great redeeming quality; he got shit done.

Like their bus. Hogun did not know how he had got them a bus; maybe he'd had to break a guy's legs with a baseball bat. Hogun didn't care. They had their own bus. Volstagg had wanted to call it 'Priscilla'. Sif had wanted to call it the 'Ship of Toenails.' Eventually, they'd settled on 'Valkyrie.' Valkyrie was an absolute pig and had died on them three times in the last twelve miles. She was bright yellow, and Fandral painted 'Sif + W3' on her side in curly lettering, his calligraphy so delicate that it made them look less like a rock band and more like a travelling bridge club.

If it hadn't been for Loki's unique, frightening skills of negotiation, they would have been touring in a three-wheeled van with Hogun's drums strapped to the roof. So Hogun gave credit where it was due.

Inside their bus, in the section that doubled as Volstagg's lyric-writing studio and their mess hall, Sif had pinned up a poster of a gorgeous, muscular blond, every luscious inch of him from the neck down wrapped in leather. Lip curled arrogantly, the most vicious pair of blue eyes. When she had a headache, Sif liked nothing better than to spend an hour peppering it with darts. Most of the tiny pinpricks in the poster were now localised in the region of the blond's crotch.

Thor Odinson. The distinguished competition.

At least, Loki said he was their competition. Hogun, personally, didn't think they were anywhere near his league. Thor Odinson and the 'Avengers'. He'd seen them play, paying special attention to his opposite number; Wanda Maximoff. She played drums like she wanted to PULP them, slender hands blurring into invisibility.

Vicious. Like Thor, Hogun thought. The other three didn't have that; Steve was, by all accounts, a great guy and an amazing singer, but he was too clean-cut to fit in beside Thor's snarling intonations and Wanda's murderous beats. Tony was better, smoother, a charismatic performer, but he spent too much time trying to copy Steve's sound. Hogun didn't think the Avengers were going to last. Thor, however, was going places. Bigger and better places than any of this sorry crew were going.

Hogun passed by the poster and winced as a sharp, shrill shriek pierced the veil of his hangover like a nail to the forehead.

"Balder!"

It was as though Loki had two voices. There was the one he used on them, the common scum he managed and marketed, the soft, moderate voice that never so much as jumped an octave. Then there was the voice he used when he was talking to Balder. Balder, who was now poking his head out from the back of their battery-powered minifridge. He had a screwdriver between his (perfect) teeth, grease over his (perfect) face and his (perfect, fucking perfect) hair was a mess.

He was wearing pants slung low, weighed down by a dozen and one wrenches, spanners, and fiddly tools sticking out of deep pockets. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a long triangle of brown curls and deeply tanned skin that Hogun took a moment to appreciate.

"Yes?" Balder said, politely, tucking a lock of white hair behind his ear, only to have it flop messily back under Loki's scowl.

"Aren't you finished yet?" Loki snapped, as though he'd caught Balder masturbating or picking grit from between his toes.

Balder looked pointedly at the splayed innards of the fridge, and back to Loki. "Not quite, no. It's taking a bit longer than I thought it would."

Balder was Loki's… boyfriend? Fucktoy? Support system? Restraining bolt? Parole officer? They had never asked, because Balder was too sweet to ask a question like that and Loki was too scary. Not that they couldn't handle scary. But Loki was their accountant, and their budget manager, and at the end of the day he was the guy who decided how much beer money they were allowed.

"You may as well not bother now," Loki said, coldly. "Everything's defrosted. We'll need to buy supplies again tomorrow. If I'd known this would happen I'd have made you buy a new one."

Whatever Balder was in his personal capacity, he was also their driver, and the guy who fixes their bus, their instruments and their equipment. Good with his hands.

If they were to put Balder up on stage with them, he wouldn't even have to play a note to make them the richest people on earth. People would kill to get tickets to see him again, and again, and again. They wouldn't even cheer, they'd stand there, staring, while Balder shifted on the balls of his feet and smiled awkwardly. When Loki had first introduced him, there had been a moment of slack-jawed silence from all three of them. He was one of those people that you wanted to touch just to make sure they were real.

How to put it? Balder was so good looking- and so fucking good- that he was intimidating. Fandral hadn't even tried to flirt with him yet. He should have been on magazines. Or in an airtight glass case. He should not have been on their lousy bus fixing their lousy fridge.

"I was certain it would last," Balder said sadly. "The man I brought it from seemed very trustworthy. He reassured me that…"

"Then man you brought it from was a junk dealer at a flea market," Loki snapped. "I do not put any degree of trust in the men you choose to buy things from Balder, I trust YOU to make the things you buy functional. That is why you are HERE. That is the sole purpose of your EXISTENCE."

"But it seems such a waste to buy a new fridge," sighed Balder, Loki's caustic tone rolling off him like water of a duck's back as he resumed tinkering. "I did like this one so much. And all its parts are in perfect working order. I just… ah-HAH!"

Looked like he was onto something. Hogun left them to… bicker? Squabble? Flirt? Whatever the hell it was they did, and he moved into the heart of the bus.

Where Sif sat, cross-legged, typing on her laptop. She was in charge of their Youtube channel, and their Myspace account, and their blog, and their official website. In addition, she was the person to whom Loki delegated tasks that he didn't think were worth his notice, like designing flyers and sorting out lists of promoters.

Surrounding her was an array of empty cans, candy wrappers, dirty socks and unopened condoms. They lived like pigs; not one of them had showered in two weeks, not since they were lucky enough to get to stay a night in a bed and breakfast. Most of the time Loki made them sleep in the bus and eat whatever they could pry off the road. He, himself, did not ever eat, just sipped and sipped from that tiny silver flask.

Fandral was sprawled out on a giant beanbag, his iPod plugged into his ears, foot tapping. Listening to his favourite band of the week, a weird, experimental thing called The Inhumans. Not to Hogun's taste, although he liked their pianist; she wore this bizarre red wig that flowed over her feet and dripped over the stage- must be hell to hold her head up through an hour-long performance in it, he thought. Their manager, a shrimpy bald guy with tattoos all over his face, had once sent W3 a voodoo doll, which could have been a threat or a compliment. Hogun couldn't tell; The Inhumans were weird. What could you expect from a group whose lead vocalist never actually sung, but stood there staring dead ahead as his bandmates made odd, alien sounds around him?

Weirder still, in that they actually had a lyricist – a talented, talkative man with curly black hair, whom Sif swore she had once sucked off in a bathroom ('not half bad, when you could get his cock far enough down your throat to make him shut up.'). They published the lyrics on the net, and whenever someone asked them why their vocalist never sung them, they would just look at you blankly until you went away.

Long story short; The Inhumans were really fucking weird.

"Hey," Hogun said, in greeting.

"Hello, love," Fandral said, removing his iPod. "Are they at it again?"

"Yes."

"I love Hungary," Volstagg said, pushing his way in from the back of the bus and dropping down next Fandral's beanbag. "Don't you?"

He had an open can of beer in his hand, and he used it to gesture to the rain-soaked windows. "All this atmosphere. All this gen-o-say-kwa. Couldn't do without it."

"I'm told it's lovely in Summer," said Fandral.

"Where are we going next?" Hogun asked. His arms were wrapped tight about his midsecton, as they did when he was worried, or annoyed.

Consulting the map, Fandral said, "Some pisspot little town, and then… Latveria."

Hogun's eye twitched.

"Just joking," said Fandral. His nose developed a little wrinkle when he was laughing on the inside. Like a baby rabbit.

"I don't like those kind of jokes," Hogun growled.

"Romania is next," said Volstagg, without consulting the map; Volstagg remembered things like that easily. "Then we turn around and hit Croatia. Then we go home. Then, three months from now, we're in Norway again."

"Have you eaten?" Fandral asked, his eyes trailing down Hogun's stomach.

"Not hungry."

"So that's a no. Volstagg, get him some of that leftover cottage pie."

"I'm not hungry," Hogun said again, but he'd eat the pie. He always did. Fandral had had an eye on his waistline ever since that bout of anorexia when he was seventeen. And, fine, Hogun had lost a few pounds in the last few weeks. It always happened when he was on the road, it didn't mean anything.

He wouldn't take this mothering bullshit from anyone but Fandral. One thing Hogun had always believed, very strongly, is that a person should have full rule over himself.

Fandral pulled him down into his lap without preamble, and licked his ear.

"Stop being grumpy," he husked, linking his arms around his stomach.

"Fucking hate cold weather," Hogun muttered, twisting Fandral's ridiculous beard. "Hate this, too."

"The fans love it."

"Fucking hate the fans."

"What if," said Fandral, "we go into the back, and I suck you off? Then, after that, we can share the cottage pie, and you can listen to this new song I've found."

It was an undeniably attractive prospect.


	2. evacuate the dance floor

_Chapter 2: __evacuate the dance floor_

Halfway through, Volstagg barged in on them, snorted, and sat down to watch.

"Manager said we weren't allowed to do this anymore," he said, as Hogun swore and jerked up into Fandral's mouth. "He said it was bad for our image."

"Considering the amount of time his cock spends up Balder's arse or down Balder's throat, that it is stunningly hypocritical," Hogun snapped, arching backwards.

Volstagg looked at him askance. "Hogun."

He was right. It was never fair to rip on Balder. He'd probably just killed a fairy.

"S…sorry," he managed, as Fandral withdrew almost entirely to punish him, suckling on the tip of his cock like it was a globe of ice-cream atop a cone. It was probably a bad sign that he could interpret his bandmate's moods and reactions based on the different ways in which they chose to suck him off. Pathetically, he whined until Volstagg snickered.

"He's sorry. Let him off the hook," Volstagg said, reaching over to stroke Fandral's hair. Accordingly, Fandral relinquished and deep-throated him, drawing a heartfelt groan of satisfaction from W3's least popular member.

Hoisting him up, Volstagg positioned his body so that he was leaning against the other man's chest, his head pressed back into his red beard. Volstagg had been bullied in school for being red-haired and fat, and had gotten his revenge by becoming fatter, and growing as much hair as he could. Hogun had snipped a lock off one night while he slept, and kept it in his pocket as a good-luck charm. He was fully prepared to acknowledge that his superstitions were warped. But when Volstagg had found out he'd chuckled and kissed Hogun's cheek, so he was pretty warped too.

Starting the band had been Hogun's idea, although he'd let Sif think it was hers.

They'd all grown up in the same shabby street, and they been practicing and trying out new songs together since they were fourteen. The band had not been a big project, but another aspect of their friendship, evolving as they did. Volstagg was the only one of them with any formal training, gleaned from night classes paid for with various summer jobs.

Years passed. The others had had boyfriends and girlfriends, none of them ever serious. Sif had been accepted into the local university alongside Hogun; she had majored in Maths, he, in Archaeology. Fandral had had a raging fight with his parents and stormed out, Volstagg's mother had beaten the shit out of him and called him an ugly fat slug one too many times, and it wasn't even a question of whether Hogun would take them both in. Nor was it ever in doubt that Sif would get fed up with her college roommate and follow shortly behind them. The apartment had been small, but they'd split the rent, and they'd never been bothered by having to sleep in the same room, often huddled together like hamsters when it had been cold and they couldn't afford heating. And they never, ever got on one another's nerves. Oh, they'd fought, and bitched and moaned at one another, but that was just another aspect of being friends. Like the band.

Hogun had found himself at twenty-two, living with three of the loudest, most slovenly people on earth, and realised that they were the only people he'd ever loved.

And, more worryingly, had realised that he was alone in this predicament. The rest of them loved easily and often. He didn't. He'd had no girlfriends, no boyfriends. It took him years to form intimate attachments, whereas someone like Fandral seemed able to do it in the course of two glasses of cheap box wine.

He couldn't lose them. They didn't realise how important they were. And he didn't have much time, he told himself, because soon enough one of them would find a soul mate, or maybe Sif would finally decide to go work for the United Nations in Paris as she'd always wanted, and then the group's cohesion would be lost. Slowly. The rest of them would break away too, until it was just him, with no more friends, and no particular passion in life beyond playing the drums.

The point at which Hogun had reached this conclusion had coincided neatly with the point at which they started taking the music thing seriously, and the band actually became a band instead of four friends playing about.

"More," Hogun whispered, squeezing his eyes shut until red spots danced before them, and Fandral took him deeper.

Success had ambled their way far sooner than they'd thought it would, largely due to Loki's involvement. Hogun planned to keep them successful as long as possible. As long as they were successful, they would stay together.

His father, a pharmacist of good standing, had hoped he would go into medicine. "You've got the right personality, boy," he'd said when he was trying to sell Hogun on the idea. "You're soft-spoken, thoughtful, and perceptive. You've got steady hands."

Hogun loved and respected his father, and therefore refrained from pointing out that he had spent every one of his eighteen years listening to him talk about how much he hated physicians, scorned psychologists and thought surgeons were 'avaricious pondscum.'

It was just as well, because playing the drums was all he was good for, much as gyrating obscenely in front of an audience was all Fandral was good for.

Together, they made one hell of a band.

Volstagg continued to plant tiny, distracting kisses on Hogun's forehead and eyelids as Fandral finished up, licking him clean and tucking him away. As always, Hogun felt within himself the inclination to cling, to make one or other or both of them stay like this for longer. Fortunately, Volstagg saved him that embarrassment by nudging his shoulder and saying, "And now you can do me, Kakihara, to make up for the dreadful things you said about Balder."

Only Volstagg still called him that. It was funny, the way they'd adapted to their new names.

0

They had doublechecked, then triplechecked their stuff by the time they rolled out of Budapest- no one wanted a repeat of Paris, when Volstagg had left his stuffed pig behind and insisted they go back to get it.

Mountains and hills rolled by the windows, the view only occasionally broken up by a herd of goats or, once, a deer.

"Listen, I've had this idea for merchandise," said Volstagg, whose hangovers always went away first. "Helmets."

Sif, who was curled up next to Hogun's leg with a wet flannel over her forehead, said, "Helmets? What, like Viking helmets?"

"Yeah. Only bigger. You know how pissed off you always get when people depict Vikings with nasty great horns, that sort of thing?"

"Yes. It's a totally inaccurate and insulting preconception that I don't particularly want the band to enforce, Volstagg."

"I know, I know," he said, waving a hand. "But here's the thing; we take that, and we run with it. Run AWAY with it. Highlight how bloody stupid it is by wearing helmets that… wait, I've drawn a sketch, let me show you…"

He tossed her a notepad, which she flipped through until her eyes landed on the illustration in question. Hearing her gasp, Hogun craned his head to look.

"Jesus, Volstagg," he said. "You can't be serious. You could put someone's eye out with those."

"Look at them," Sif breathed. "If we actually made these, and wore them, they'd graze the ceiling."

"Great, isn't it?" said Volstagg, clearly pleased with their reactions. "The manager's always talking about 'brand recognition' and doing something to distinguish ourselves. I can't think of anything that would distinguish us more than going on stage wearing something like that."

"We'd look like a herd of buck," said Hogun.

"They'd laugh, you idiot," said Sif. "They'd throw fruit at us. If they didn't have fruit on them they'd go and buy some just to come back and throw it at us. Can you really imagine performing in them? What if they fell off?"

"Can you imagine what Fandral would say," said Hogun, quietly, "if we told him he had to wear one?"

From the Cheshire cat smiles that spread over their faces at that image, he could tell that the idea had gained instant ground. Fandral spent an hour prior to every performance perfecting his hair.

"Or the manager," said Sif, with a giggle, checking over her shoulder to make sure he wasn't listening. "God, can you imagine him wearing that?"

"Be good for him," Volstagg grunted. "He needs to lighten up badly. I'm going to take that sketch to Balder, see if he can't come up with something."

Hogun nodded. Fandral was normally their costume designer, but he'd immolate himself before agreeing to construct those.

After Sif finished her catnap and their hangovers had relented, they ate lunch- coffee from a flask, cheese and tomato sandwiches prepared before they'd left, and a box of vanillekipferl- curving biscuits that tasted like hazelnuts, coated in powdered sugar, which Fandral had purchased, insisting that they try at least one national dessert from every country they visited.

Loki was in the vicinity, ignoring them as he spoke into his phone, as he generally did unless they were complaining about something. He spent ninety percent of his waking life with his cellphone glued to his ear, speaking in fast, clipped sentences in twenty-eight different languages. On one occasion, he'd slipped into French, which Sif had studied for a semester at university, and she'd whispered to them that she'd been able to discern the words 'police', 'arrangement' and 'threshing machine.'

Once, they'd stolen his phone, and had discovered a list of promoters, venues, industry contacts and lawyers that would have been fifty pages long if printed on paper, in Times New Roman Font Size 8. There had also been one pet food shop, and God only knew what that was doing there.

He hadn't been angry when he'd found them with it. He never got angry at them. At Balder, sometimes at people on the phone, but never at them. Hogun had never met anyone with such a bottomless well of patience for their shit; he would have found it comforting if he had thrown things at them once in a while.

Hogun could never shake the feeling that their manager, for all his talents and useful contacts, saw them as livestock.

Sif swapped places with Balder, to give him a break. She wasn't legally qualified to drive a bus, but she'd driven her father's truck since she was thirteen, and it wasn't as though there was anyone on the road with them. When Hogun showed Volstagg's sketch to Balder, he looked thoughtful, and said he'd see what he could do.

"You'd need a material that wouldn't be too heavy," he said to himself. "Making it wouldn't be too hard, the challenge would be getting it to stay on. And you want it to look…"

"Halfway between epic and ridiculous," supplied Hogun. "Don't tell Fandral, he'll wet himself."

"Yes, yes. I understand."

Why did Balder annoy him?

It wasn't that he was an idealist; Sif was an idealist. Nor was it his agreeable temperament; Fandral was agreeable, accommodating to a fault. Balder possessed all those character traits that Hogun found most worthy of admiration, yet actually interacting with the man set his teeth on edge.

"Can I ask you something?" Hogun said.

"Of course!"

He was a positive puppy. So happy to have the barest of overtures made in his direction. Maybe his parents hadn't hugged him enough?

Hogun cocked a finger at his head, like he was aiming an invisible gun. "Your hair. It looks awful."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose it does," Balder agreed, patting his ash-white coiffure.

Jesus. He wasn't human.

"Does he make you dye it that colour?"

A pink flush rose in Balder's cheeks and he fell to blustering. "He? You mean, ah, Loki I presume? No, no, I… I know he likes it, so… that is, he's never MADE me do anything. It makes him happy, and it doesn't matter to me what my hair looks like."

"Huh," said Hogun. "You want a biscuit?"

"… I'm sorry?"

"A biscuit," Hogun said, impatiently. "Fandral brought them. They're sugar-coated. There aren't many left."

"I… no. Thank you. I'm diabetic."

Satisfied that he had done his good deed for the day, Hogun nodded, and departed.

The next town was fine, nothing special. A bigger crowd than Loki had anticipated, so maybe their Myspace account was doing its magic thing. They got to splash out on a night's stay at a Holiday Inn; given that Loki booked one room for them, and another for Balder and himself, they all agreed it was because he wanted to fuck him in a bed. The bus was big, but it wasn't much for privacy, and Balder, Hogun said, looked like a screamer. Sif had scolded him for that, and made him ride her like a pony as penance for his sins.

The first problem- the first of their many, many problems- came the day after, as they were rehearsing. The bus stopped suddenly, and Fandral went to the front to investigate.

When he returned, ten minutes later, his plucked brows were furrowed.

"Um. Bit of a problem," said Fandral, biting his lip.

"Don't tell me Balder wants to stop for another hitchhiker," Sif asked. The last one had tried to get them to autograph his balls.

"No, it's a roadblock. Apparently there was an avalanche. We're going to have to turn back and take the long way round."

They groaned. Hogun swore, and kicked the seat in front of him. "How much time will we lose?"

Their schedule was so tight, Hogun thought, how were they going to make up the time? They were booked solid in Romania.

"None. Loki's worked out a quicker route. Um…"

"What?"

"You're not going to like it," said Fandral, and held up his hands in a placatory gesture that seemed, Hogun realised with alarm, to be aimed at him, "but I've looked at the map and it really will be faster. We just…"

"Fandral. What?"

"… we'll need to cut through Latveria. No, Hogun, wait!"


End file.
